Summer tourism strong this year in Hudson Valley

Hot days. Cool nights. The rain that fell often arrived late, after dark, and left early the next morning. No meterological records were broken, no tropical storms came calling.

But you don't need a weatherman to know which way the winds of tourism blew this summer.

Here, on Labor Day, the informal end to summer, many connected to the region's tourist industry say they couldn't have asked for a better season.

Although mid-Hudson tourism statistics are still being compiled, tourism is a bulwark of the state's economy, its impact invoked at every turn by those who would develop new venues — and those who would oppose them.

There's no more shining example of this dynamic at work than the ongoing debate centered on where to establish casino gambling in the region.

Even without casinos, the most recent statewide figures available show tourism's impact in 2013 was big and getting bigger:

Last year, the industry generated direct spending of $59 billion, producing an estimated $7.5 billion in state and local taxes. The number of visitors to New York is estimated to have increased by 8.8 million and projected to finish with a total of 219 million visitors. As the state's fourth-largest employer, (one out of every 12 jobs in the state is tourism-related) the tourism industry added 28,500 jobs last year, for a total of 832,500 jobs that generated roughly $18 billion in wages.

While lacking regional statistics from the state, Susan Hawvermale, executive director of Hudson Valley Tourism said, "My impression is it's been a great summer."

Anecdotal evidence from tourist-oriented businesses large and small confirmed Hawvermale's estimation.

You could say tourism was an up-and-down affair, as well as a back-and-forth one, at the Walkway Over the Hudson.

The up-and-down of it was provided by the Walkway's long-awaited, 21-story elevator on the Poughkeepsie side of the linear park.

The back-and-forth part came as the Walkway was connected for all of 2013 to the Dutchess County Rail Trail.

The result was a record-high attendance of 700,000 visitors.

There's no reason to think the final tallies for 2014 won't be higher still, according to Walkway spokesman Steve Densmore. "Not with the way the weather's been this summer," he said last week.

You might not expect a business best known for manufacturing airport runway lights to have much truck with tourism.

But everything about Gillinder Glass in Port Jervis defies expectations.

Gillinder is a mom-and-pop business that's been in business for 153 years.

Its original Philadelphia plant attracted some 10 million visitors during the nation's first World's Fair, in 1876 — a whopping 20 percent of the country's population at the time.

The crowds have diminished since its relocation to Port Jervis more than a century ago. But tourists are still a vital part of the family business, according to Allyson Gillinder, wife of sixth-generation owner Charlie Gillinder.

"We're pretty reliant on visitors, especially to our (giftware) store," she said last week. "And this aummer was better than last year."

Gillinder said that yes, the weather plays a role in their attendance, but again, not as much as you might expect.

"When it rains, we get a lot of visitors from campgrounds, looking for a place out of the weather," she said.

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts was born of the previous century's most notorious band of weekend out-of-towners.

And 45 years after the 1969 Woodstock music festival, the former cow pasture that's become the region's premier concert venue gave birth to the Mysteryland festival, complete with air-conditioned tents, jam-packed hotels and tens of thousands of young out-of-towners.

Even if the summer's total attendance (175,000 fans) hasn't eclipsed Bethel Woods' original numbers, it has presented a wider variety of acts, while increasing its pavilion stage performances from 17 last year to 20 this year. Tens of thousands more folks have enjoyed over 200 additional cultural, educational and community programs, or visited its award-winning museum.

Bethel Woods, like most of the rest of the region's tourist destinations, doesn't shut down on Labor Day. Summer, as a matter of fact, isn't even the region's top tourist season.

That distinction belongs to autumn, with its harvest festivals, corn mazes and legions of leaf-peepers yet to come.